Guild Wars 2

Reminds me of D3 monks when Dex increased dodge chance. Sure it was nice avoiding 100% of damage, but when they did hit you (and they eventually always would) it hurt like a kitten and being in melee range meant it happened a lot.

Same thing here really, our ranged dps is basically non-existent and we rely on shadow stepping in melee range to deal quick damage and either shadow step out or stealth and reposition. Even the slightest slip up or cc is extremely punishing and its only gotten worse. I could care less about any dps buff to thief at this point, and dare devil is meaningless to me since its only acrobatics 2.0. Thief needs their defensive options redesigned as well as a few of their offensive skills to be on par with the most prominent set (d/p).

Simple number values won’t fix anything, thief is in a unique problem that needs actual thought to fix, only question is how long before any effort will be made for them before people really start getting toxic towards the dev’s.

Because 80% of my account’s life span has been spent on my thief and I like a challenge. I use celestial thief time to time just to kitten around

Cynz.9437:

So, as far as i understand, unload will do more dmg, maybe AA. The rest like body shot, head shot and blinding powder still will do non existent dmg (so 300ish lol). I don’t see how this 20% changed ANYTHING for pp nor adressed any issues thieves have generally……
Yeah the dmg increase is welcome but really it won’t solve anything. It is utility/survival/way to deal with miriad passives is what thief lacks atm. I know THAT is actually hard to implement but why even bother wasting recources on numbers change that won’t do anything? You are not gonna be able to run with chopped off legs just because your wheelchair is tiny bit faster now.

+1

Tabootrinket.2631:

Reem.3578:

We could walk around LA while stacking stealth all the way XD
Kinda funny but symbolic as hell :P

Or we could also hire a mesmer to stack the stealth for us :p

Sad day when we can’t even do our own thing as good anymore…..

I’m shocked anyone had a glimpse of hope when they announced daredevil, they BUTCHERED acrobatics because it had too much evasion, only to make our entire elite spec based on a playstyle we once had prior to that sad day. I’ll say there are some interesting traits in DD but they could of been incorporated into acrobatics in favor of the lesser used traits and maintained what acrobatics was supposed to be, instead we get the least creative specialization on a class already struggling to be relevant.

For OP, I say we pick the Legendary Karka’s funeral for our event, only makes sense to die alongside another terrible design (good god the lag that event had….).

Don’t like to sound bitter but after 3 years, I only hop on this game for a few hours a week if at all when I used to play near daily. It’s not because of life, its because I lost interest.

I’m just worried this extra evasion will take the same route s/d did and get nerfed. I still would like to see efforts made towards d/d, s/p, p/p, and p/d to be a little more up to par, not just the weapon skills but the playstyles and their respective options to build with them.

Just out of curiosity, did they nerf acro so hard because of this spec?

I never cared what weapon we got, we still have 4 weapon sets underperforming and a list of bad traits and skills so long it would require the first 4 posts of a thread to be fully addressed.

Can’t blind me with new toys anet, I want duct tape and glue for the old ones!

We just need more condition removal in the form of our 3 key defenses. We already have 1 sort of, stealth (SE) but the others are too unreliable or not even close to sufficient. The way I can see it for traits,

[Feline Grace] Gain vigor when you evade. Lose 1 condition when you apply vigor(includes BT). (trait line defense covered)

[Pain Response] change to apply resistance for 4 seconds + regeneration for 10 seconds instead of remove conditions, same paramters. ICD increased to 25 seconds (since baseline acro will have suitable condition removal)

[Revealed Training] Gain power and lose 1 condition when revealed. 200 power, 1 condition removed (optional defense for offence)

[Trickster] Increase condition removal to 2 (brings it more in line competing with BT)

[Quick pockets] Reduce initiative gain to 2, add effect to transfer 1 condition on your next attack when swapping weapons. (that trickery! Hard to compete with SoH and BW in current state).

And for skills,

[Ice drake venom] delete, make [Karka Venom] transfer a condition with your next 3 attacks. (venom support and would be strong base line to be slotted without needing traits)

[Signet of Agility] Change condition removal to remove 1 condition for each bar of endurance filled (since you can’t really stay at 0 endurance, this would work as 2 conditions if you are below 50% endurance as it technically gives you the full bar. Rewards good timing but can be harmful if a thief doesn’t spend atleast 1 dodge before using this.)

[Shadow Refuge] Add effect to reduce incoming condition duration by 50% while active (this skill is already a giant marker for AoE’s).

T raw.4658:

I honestly feel a thief should be able to 1v1 any spec/class and win in a reasonable amount of time IF the thief player is better.

I also think that all hard counters need to be removed and all 1v1 encounters should be solely based on skill.

Well a lot of professions have very strong methods of retaliating against our bursts or strong defenses that can recover from them that drag the fight on longer which is something thief doesn’t do well with in a pvp setting. I don’t think we need more dps to better ourselves in 1v1 though, we need better tools to survive and control the enemy so coming across that 1v1 could be deadly for more than just the 4 seconds we show up.

I think the worst reveal skill, is actually the trait from engineer that applies it if you hit them while they are stealthed!

Put on a flame thrower and go hunting, no stealth class can escape you.

L Step.8659:

Thief is like perfectly designed for conquest, unless something majorly gutted it or they gave another class equal mobility/stealth it will most likely always be meta in PvP.

Thief has only 1 role in the meta, and that role is slowly getting gutted with some professions getting more ways to help their team other than running away to decap a point.

It is a vital role, but that role can be done by others all the while remaining a threat on the node and being reliable in a team fight. People will look for and focus fire thieves when they reveal themselves, its not a perfectly designed profession having to run all the time.

Nier.8741:

You can’t complain about CC when there is just so many evades and stun breaks on certain classes.

My issue with cc is when multiple players use it and not for the coordinating part, but just to dump all of it on you so for the next few seconds there is a good chance you will get downed. There are stun breakers but few stun breakers provide stability which is what really deals with this problem. Its not “chained” so much as spammed with no thought and makes for a very dull experience being completely locked out of any action and no chance of survival.

I only suggest consecutive cc effects become more coordinated, not become obsolete.

Both topics are nothing new, but people tend to notice them more after major balance updates whether it is a major change to a build or for w/e reason they ignored it before because build X wasn’t as strong before even with such powers.

Lets start with each boon and its problem.

[Might]
(Impact on gameplay) 99.9999% of encounters involve the defeat of another enemy, so dps is always a must. Since day 1, the idea of killing them before killing you has been around and guild wars 2 is no stranger to this. However might currently is something gained far to easily on some builds and it makes those without its access fall behind and become obsolete. Basically, why bring a glass cannon when you can bring a tank that hits like a truck?

(Issue) I don’t remember 100% for all professions but from what I remember back when I played wvw, might was invaluable and always gained from stacking up and forming parties that each had their solid source of might for those stacks to blast fire fields and anything else to add to it. Now it feels more like a perma 20+ stack effect that is without a doubt, very strong and a rather obvious problem.

(Solution) Increase might’s effects from 30 to ~70 (old value), and drastically reduce all sources of self might gain to make the upkeep incredibly short or non-existent (this is the most important part). Lastly, review all sources of AoE might gain (shouts, auras, elixirs, etc) to be stronger in duration and if the role fits, add might gain to support effects. The goal here is to turn might gain into more of a quick burst combo or a group effort to rush the enemy and not something that gives tanks the tools to out-dps their enemy. This also gives support via might more thought and become meaningful to teamwork. Some AoE might skills already are doing well so like I suggested, review them and decide if it needs any adjusting.

[Crowd Controls]
(Impact on gameplay) Nothing secures a kill more than locking an enemy down from taking action. The thought of stun breaking and stability isn’t something new, however neither is the thought of an overwhelming amount of cc preventing any action at all to be taken which for some only a few seconds means defeat.
(Issue) Some crowd control effects are far to easy to pull off either in execution or from low cooldowns and it makes their, shall I say “skill” level, rather pitiful. This becomes painfully obvious when a profession doesn’t have stability or a movement based stun breaker and is simply kept in the disabled status until they are defeated from multiple sources. Basically what is seen is a guaranteed kill because that player cannot take any action what so ever to recover or escape due to either 1 cc heavy build or multiple builds simply throwing everything at the enemy until they die which is rather dull of an experience.
(Solution) Its nothing other games haven’t done and its an effective solution, grant immunity to disables after X amount are received (for a short duration). Now with guild wars 2 there are a wide range of disables from fear, stun, knockdown, launch, and many more. So for this to still promote healthy teamwork and communication they should limit this to unique disable effects as well as duration.

This would be a “reverse defiance bar” for pvp encounters. Basically depending on the type of disable and its duration would determine how much of the bar gets filled up. Upon filling the defiance bar up (this bar would only be visible on your personal UI and not at all to the enemies) you would gain 2 seconds of 3 stacks of stability(just a suggested amount, this does not break you out of the last cc effect). This effect would have no ICD since it is based on the defiance bar filling up. Once the bar fills up it automatically resets to 0%. A general idea of how much it would take to activate this effect on someone:

-Launch fills up 30%
-Knockdown fills up 20% for every full second it applies.
-Knockback fills up 15%.
-Daze fills up 5% for every .25 seconds it lasts
-Fear fills up 10% for every second it lasts
-Pull fills up 15%
-Taunt fills up 20% for every full second it applies
-Stun fills up 20% for every full second it applies

And for reducing the bar.

-Stun breaking removes 20%
-Everytime a disable effect is overridden by another effect, if it is a different effect it applies 50% less to the defiance bar.
-You naturally lose 10% every 3 seconds.

I know its a lot to program, and adds a lot more for the game client to keep track of which puts more strain on the servers. But imho that’s the cost needed to balance cc to be less faceroll and more coordinated.

Im game, just tell me when.

Ha, that’d make me laugh. Our elite spec having the absence of an off-hand weapon, which also means less stats in pve/wvw. BRILLIANT!

no idea though…. I don’t think our elite spec has even been started at this point. Nobody at anet seems to have a clue what they want thief to be outside of d/p stealth power.

Didn’t this happen over a year ago with d/d ele becoming unkillable for the most part, and then getting nerfed to oblivion out of the blue?

Same since day 1, I walk away from those fights asap before I pretend like they’re a worthy fight.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

NinjaEd.3946:

They should just not make self-might stacking so kitten easy on some builds. Might boon alone makes support builds meaningless when you can spec for dps and dish out 25 stacks at the same time. Not sure who thought this would be a balanced idea.

then why is nobody supporting a hard counter for might stacking builds?

Dunno, I think I posted a while ago suggesting they buff might but lower the amount of might people can get on their own and the durations a bit so getting high stacks on your own would no longer be possible but working as a group (aoe might, blasting fire fields, etc) gets stronger. Lastly look into how might gain is for some professions and expand on possibly giving heavy might support a role to promote support instead of raw dps.

Some boons are just too simple to keep up and in some cases very strong with their uptime. For example, perma protection from mesmers pretty much makes up for the fact that they wear light armor and then some. 25 might on necro/engi/warrior/ele makes bursts even more deadly or lets them sacrafise offensive stats for defensive ones making them hard to kill and deadly at the same time. Perma fury is also pretty strong, 20% is not something to go without noticing. Long story short, I rather see boon support than the self-boon frenzy that has been going on since day 1.

Anyone forget that thief dies from “physical” encounters most of the time? In what world would you want to be up front with your thief using utilities like this?

Pretty sure the name of the trait suggests warrior anyways but people already had this discussion. Endurance gain on skill/action isn’t a thief only thing :/

They should just not make self-might stacking so kitten easy on some builds. Might boon alone makes support builds meaningless when you can spec for dps and dish out 25 stacks at the same time. Not sure who thought this would be a balanced idea.

Maugetarr.6823:

“Mos Eisley Spaceport The thief forum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

-devs

Joking aside, this place can be pretty hostile towards devs. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to spend their spare time here. No one wants to work hard at something just to be yelled at.

Work hard? In what moment has there been any evidence of a dev working kitten thief? The released some short videos explaining thief in fractals (only to die repeatedly) and show us how various skills proc signet of malice healing and small features of thief. There is no passion for thief from anet, and its grown more and more apparent with these balance updates. They really should show the community some effort and I’d be willing to bet any rude or uncalled for comments will be quickly shut out by the numerous thief fanatics who want a meaningful discussion with the developers.

I sincerely doubt the respectful thief players would rage at anet if they opened such a thread, even if it feels justified. We just want progress.

They can’t fix anything without trying to step into our shadows. I think they are just worried of getting flamed but there are a number of well behaved thieves who would gladly give feedback on the matter and contribute to a meaningful discussion.

This can’t happen though without some dev getting out of that comfort bubble and more importantly, they have to want thief to succeed. If they just send any dev and they happen to give a kitten about thief our responses will get nowhere.

style.6173:

Yes, your role is to +1 a fight. It is much broader than that though as well. Know when to fight, when to distract, and when to decap.

Its still just a +1 role. You either +1 a fight, +1 an objective (such as animals on forest) or +1 a non-contested point to decap. I watched the EU tourny’s and that what thieves did, sure they were on the team but when it came to their main role in the team it was bouncing from point to point to decap and +1 a fight when an enemy got low or they would get focused and melted.

Thief should have more than that to choose from, we may be good at this role but its the only role and its stale as kitten.

Rednik.3809:

NinjaEd.3946:

Combined with quickness on a short cooldown and a surplus of cc great sword is ridiculously powerful and easy to use in any game mode.

I don’t even… You sure it’s not 2012? You know, omgwtf mighty GS, what-is-dodge-button, etc?

Its a very easy and effective weapon set, can you argue that?

The heavy hits are there and if they manage to get you with even a little bit of cc 100b cuts deep without needing a full channel (full channel usually means death). Not saying it is unstoppable but good god is it easy. How many evades do you know of that can hit over 6k?

+1 to the +1 neglect we are stuck with.

I always pictured something like stronghold would be for gvg, larger map with more side objectives. 5v5 for stronghold just doesn’t seem very intriguing.

3 point conquest is really boring, and the side objectives often do very little to change things up except in the case of spirit watch and the forest.

As far as the OP, like terrorsquad said it would end up being the same people unless those people started to leave which is seeming more and more like the case. Skin rewards are the best incentive other than money to keep playing pvp, but the experience itself needs improvements. Add more side objectives and map control so the kitten zerging can stop and teamwork can be for more than just fights at mid point and sending a guy to decap the home point. Some reworks to the current system to focus less on killing the team and more on working as a team.

-Either remove or lessen points on kill. I’d say lessen so it still has some bonus for securing a stomp or taking out a roamer so something like 2 points per kill.

-Occasionally (1-2 times per match depending on length) advertise an event which rewards double points for holding a specific point and in the case of 1 team greatly dominating another(~150 point lead), give the losing side a point reward for capturing a specific point (25?). This keeps the chance to re-enter the fight and keep things, in most cases 150 point lead currently is near impossible to dig out of in non-hotjoin matches.

-rethink battle of kyhlo and skyhammer side objective (siege weapons) to be something more fluid than camping on it and firing away. Capricorn had a good idea with the requirement of bringing ammo for a quick use and the ammo having its own cooldown.

For Battle of Kyhlo I’d say place a limited supply of ammo around the map which is hidden inside the various obstacles that can be broken (buildings, wooden crates/barrels, etc) so map destruction fuels your catapult as well as keeping ammo away from the enemy’s hands.

For Skyhammer, rotate through the 3 points kitten. First team to capture point B gets access to the skyhammer for 90 seconds, this determines the order in which the skyhammer will select a point and give the owner of that point access to it. After 90 seconds is up it will go to the home point of the team that captured it for 90 seconds (still only granting access to the team that holds that point). After time is up, it will go back to B for 90 seconds and the owner at the end of the 90 seconds will then see their home point become the access slot, and so on and so fourth. Each time the skyhammer is accessed it will need the cooresponding team holding the selected point to go to it and access it like normal. Once synchronized, it will grant that team the remaining time in the rotation to use it, even if they lose that point.

Additionally the skyhammer now increases your influence over a point each time it is shot. For example, if you are red and contesting a point that is blue, if you have the skyhammer and hit that point you will decrease the blue’s influence on that point by a flat amount (say 25%). This makes taking an objective from your enemy much stronger given the numerous restrictions on the skyhammer but it also makes control over the skyhammer based on your teams control of the map and its points which will shift constantly. It does add a little more “zerg at mid” mentality for a little while but that changes once the skyhammer relocates its point.

I still dislike the strength of greatsword in general although every profession with it pretty much uses it (for power builds).

In the case of warrior, its mostly just the whirlwind attack hitting for so much while evading. I can understand if they had you against a wall or were immobilized to see some serious damage but just to be tapped by the skill is an easy 4k+ which is ridiculous. Combined with quickness on a short cooldown and a surplus of cc great sword is ridiculously powerful and easy to use in any game mode. I still prefer axe/axe though, hardly see anyone use it and its quite strong with the right build.

<- will donate, my mule has several with no purpose.

MoD isn’t broken, its CS, and sort of the # of interrupt related traits that can combo off this. MoD on its own is not really a big deal though.

Nephrite.6954:

I seriously wish Karl would take another look at the Thief’s base specialisation. Look at the revenant, they got an evade for unrelenting assault now. Wish Roy was working on this class instead of that guy who does 3classes at once and forgets the trait names== anyhow no point ranting so much. So what’s the plan? We post the problems until Karl notices? Guess I’m in, even if it takes a year of flooding the forums.

Been more than a year of flooding, lol. Any who back on topic.

Who cares if its a wall of text? First off this is gana be for weapon and utility skills which shortens things up a lot as there are a lot of traits. Secondly if its formatted and looks clean then readers (hopefully a dev who has the slightest interest in seeing thief become something) can view each point and absorb its knowledge and reasoning. A simple format could be:

[Weapon/Utility skill here]
PVE/PVP/WVW Rating here x/x/x
Current skill role here
Why does it work/not work here (The longer part, but this part would explain how this skill works/doesn’t work in each game mode)
Suggestion to fix or redesign here (The somewhat long part if needed, values/functionality can change between the 3 game modes. They are not the same, so I don’t understand why some people feel that the effectiveness of 1 skill vs AI is ever going to be perfectly translated to that of versing a player. No need to explain the changes here since that will be covered in the previous part. The end goal is if a skill needs adjusting the reasoning will be to give it a purpose and make it work at least on paper)

I don’t know, I don’t really mind seeing bunkers or dealing with them. You either bring a friend and coordinate a burst or ignore them because you have 2/3 points and they are contested. The dps tanks that I see are kind of a problem though, you should not be able to get such high defenses (not talking stats here) and maintain the dps of another profession’s glass spec.

Some defenses are over the line, others are in a sweet spot, and some are down right pathetic and force people into atleast 1 trait selection to stay alive. I don’t think this balance is doing so well but it really hasn’t been getting any better over the past 3 years.

MAYBE they should do balance changes more than semi-annually.

Is this in response to all stealth based professions (only 2 really) or 1 in specific?

Sunflowers.1729:

Also, not being able to 1v1 doesn’t even mean everything. Let’s take LoL or Dota as an example. Some characters are unable to 1v1 anybody but are still #1 priority in every game because of how strong they are in certain facets. Similarly bunker Guardian isn’t going to kill anybody but they can hold a point for ages.

Being able to both 1v1 (even better than we can right now) and decap would permanently seal in the current meta of always having one thief in every pvp team, because why take any other class which can “1v1” you but doesn’t also have the super fast decapping potential? Even now you see Thief is more popular than Mes in competitive games.

I think you’re missing what people are complaining about with thieves. Being unable to 1v1 means when roamer x meets roamer y, unless they are both thieves it will depend on the competence of the non-thief player for that thief to dominate and move to the next point to decap. Then you say they are great at roaming saying you find good fights sometimes which tells me not all roamers are bright (and from past experience T1 wasn’t a good place to find challenging roamers). What if I want to use thief for something other than roaming? Why am I forced into 1 role or suffering from being sub-par? Where is the build diversity that works?

I don’t think people want thief to be top of the line for decapping and 1v1’ing and +1’ing all at once, they want options and for new things to work. For me, I don’t care about getting another dps build, I want defensive options and a variety of playstyles that don’t involve blind/stealth spam. I don’t want to just decap points and +1 fights and focus on resetting fights with stealth just to win, I want something new for once.

The only reason you’re seeing thief is because the people who are passionate about it still want it to succeed and because you look for them (since you like roaming I take it). Are they good? In the right hands, but as a class its gone nowhere for a very long time and people are getting annoyed with the same builds. Took them 3 years to “fix” last refuge and that is 1 from a long list of kitten thief has had to work with. From what I can recall (only a small list):

-adding F2+ for stolen abilities. Suggested a ton, finally done. Ty

-Removing last refuge from minor trait slot. Suggested a ton, finally done. Ty

-Distinguishing pistol from power and conditions and reworking the p/p set to not be a 3 spam. Still waiting.

-Reworking d/d to become higher reward given its higher risk. Still waiting.

-More enter/exit stealth benefits. Still waiting.

-Reworking venoms to be a little more useful and fill some role without dependency on venomous aura. Still waiting.

-Reworking our elites to either be useful (Thieves guild) or behave as an elite (BV). Still waiting.

-Reverting the sloppy animations from sb to be more fluid. Not sure who changed it or why, but since day 1 people wanted it back. Still waiting.

-Finding an excuse to slot various traits/utilities/healing skills with alternatives that greatly outperform them (even more apparent for traits since you cannot slot more than 1 trait from each tier now). Still waiting.

Not saying other professions don’t have some list of kitten they’d love to shove into the anet mailbox but atleast they got some common builds that work well without being extremely risky. I laugh when I see p/p thieves……

Sunflowers.1729:

And I know a lot of people disagree about Thieves being in a good spot, but just looking at the class distribution in WvW roaming will tell you that currently Thieves and Mesmers are still doing amazingly well. Again, PvP teams always have a Thief. What more do you want?

Where does wvw roaming place us exactly for being amazingly well?

We are limited on viable build choices, and we are limited in playstyles entirely. 1v1 depends more so on the enemy’s skill than our own, our defenses have been hacked at for so long with no compensation, and we continue to have issues with existing utilities/traits/weapons that don’t get the slightest adjustment, not even something as simple as a value change.

Only thing thief has ever received as a “buff” in the last year or so is our dps which has always been fine. I don’t think people wanted thief overall to get more dps, they wanted more builds and defensive options and none are delivered. I still try to throw out a random kitten build in pvp every now and then and even pve just to change things up a bit, but I’m bored to death of thief. Wvw roaming didn’t help the slightest, p/d was too easy, d/p disgusts me, and the rest are so-so but I often have to resort to retreating due to incoming zergs or Mesmers readying to pounce.

IMHO, thief is no where near in a good spot in any game mode. They are playable, just not enjoyable without playing anet’s version of thief (d/p roaming ><)

Remorseless, pop that Sotp or use the GS trait in BM and enjoy a ridiculous amount of vulnerability. If you prefer using sword over GS though then probably kitten ly because it has a build in cripple in the aa.

Raiden.1375:

NinjaEd.3946:

Its a neat idea except that d/d isn’t the only condition set that can have dagger in the mix so I’d hate to see p/d punished when it already is underperforming in pvp (only works in wvw because of condi foods). There needs to be more welcoming traits for any weapon set, and d/d, although flawed, is our best hybrid weapon set and it’d be nice to see it succeed.

Not sure how my suggestion would hurt P/D. With the current 33% proc chance from Dagger Training, it’s not very efficient trying to apply poison with offhand dagger skills since they all cost initiative compared to just auto attacking with a main hand dagger. A guaranteed proc chance on hit would greatly help P/D instead of mostly only helping main hand daggers. It would still be more beneficial to use D/D with Dagger Training too because it would apply 2 stacks of poison instead of 1, which makes sense because two poisoned daggers would be able to apply more poison than one.

NinjaEd.3946:

Either way, I think our access to poison is present already but the removal of our 30% condition duration hit kitten top of the severe nerf to choking gas.

I agree, mainly only Choking Gas got hurt from the poison stacking change/losing 30% condition duration from the DA line. This is probably because instead of compensating for the new changes, the duration of poison from CG was nerfed from 3s to 2s when just about every other source of poison was buffed. Now Choking Gas is incredibly weak because the poison up time is so short, and it can hardly ever apply more than 2 stacks of poison, which does about the same amount damage as the one stack of poison did before the patch.

I apologize, I didn’t mean to say it would harm p/d, only that p/d would be punished by this trait for only having 1 stack vs 2 that d/d has. The point I wanted to get across was that p/d and d/d are our condition weapon sets atm, and to shed light on the related traits in DA there would almost be no reason to pick dagger training on p/d with that set up when trapper’s respite is an alternative.

Like I said earlier there needs to be less restrictions on specific weapon sets and open them towards others. If there are to be specific it would need more than just a single effect which many of the other traits on other professions like this follow (honed axes, axe mastery, quickening thirst, zealous blade, etc). Just because we don’t have cooldowns doesn’t mean they can’t get creative and make the weapon specific traits a little more appealing. They had the idea on ankle shots but the fact that pistols have 0 sources of cripple kind of slipped their mind as do most thief balance changes follow.

I agree with llias, blind isn’t a chance to miss its 100% of your next attack regardless of targets (unless its a piercing projectile or a channel).

As far as stealth goes, I’d love to see more enter/exit stealth benefits over “while in stealth” that we have. For meld with shadows, I always felt like merging fleet of shadow to it or some revealed bonus/reduction could help show is impact a little more. Either way this trait is rather underwhelming even without comparing it to Mesmer’s PU.

Agree with most of the reasons behind the suggested changes but there are some odd ratings on some traits. Like fleet of shadow seems really obsolete with how mobile s/d already is along with acrobatics having no relation to stealth and pressure striking is only best utilized on OH pistol which provides very limited defense to support a suitable condition build and no conditions on its own. With no reliable method of re applying stealth to get sneak attack in, maybe d/p condtion? But still its nothing you can stack with and never will be given our initiative mechanic. And also adding protection and stability isn’t really thief related. I know Mesmer has stealth like us and these boons but that’s their thing, ours was always about mobility/stealth/evasion and I’d hate to change my perspective of thief defenses to become boon dependent. That’s just me though, I’m sure that whole discussion was from multiple people agreeing at some point.

Good read none the less.

Raiden.1375:

babazhook.6805:

NinjaEd.3946:

I think they should go along the lines of something a little simpler but that benefits any sort of dagger usage and the same goes for potent poison to benefit a condition build as a whole. Something like

[Dagger Training] Gain increased damage and condition duration for each dagger equipped. Off hand dagger skills refund 1 initiative if they land (dancing dagger would be limited to 1). Damage increase 5%. Condition duration increase 5%.

[Potent Poison] Increase condition duration by 15%. Poison deals an additional 15% damage.

That an interesting idea on dagger training but I really do not think 5 percent duration increase will help a lot. I assume you talking about all durations rather then just poison? 5 percent extra damage is exponentially better then 5 percent increase to condition duration.

We already had 5 percent extra rolled into daggers baseline. In power builds there are NO issues with daggers ability to inflict damage and I do not see why they need to be boosted damage wise yet again.

I still feel applying poison via dagger training is the way to go .

I agree that daggers don’t really need another 5% damage bonus since the last one was already rolled into daggers baseline. I also don’t think there needs to be 2 general condition duration increasing traits in the same line.

Not sure if you guys missed it, but what do you think about my last suggestions, including the one for Dagger Training?

Its a neat idea except that d/d isn’t the only condition set that can have dagger in the mix so I’d hate to see p/d punished when it already is underperforming in pvp (only works in wvw because of condi foods). There needs to be more welcoming traits for any weapon set, and d/d, although flawed, is our best hybrid weapon set and it’d be nice to see it succeed.

I know 5% damage =/= 5% condition duration but the durations on the conditions dagger applies are already fairly up there (6 sec poison, 10 second bleed). 5% is just an example anyways, the idea I was trying to put dagger training with was for either/or builds, or both for that matter. You can be strict power and would love that 10% bonus damage and rewarding CnD or you could be condition and appreciate that extra second of bleed in addition to the heavy ammo of dancing daggers in case you find a field to utilize it in. Remember its not exclusive to 1 condition type, so 10% would affect more than 2 skills which the power portion only sees.

Either way, I think our access to poison is present already but the removal of our 30% condition duration hit kitten top of the severe nerf to choking gas. If DT is kept as is it only promotes risky behavior with initiative spending and if it turns to an applicator with an ICD its either underwhelming or becomes too simple minded to put it to use in a condi burst. Dagger already has the conditions needed to function (minus swapping vulnerability with blind for CnD) as a condition set w/o the current dagger training, I much rather see a more skill based trait to bring some light to this weapon set.

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

About transferring condis, skelk poison should actually transfer 1 condi per succesful strike. I think that would make it a strong contender as a heal (along with a 30 second CD).

Remove ice drake venom, no one uses it and chill is very odd for a thief to apply thematically, add [Karka Venom] Transfer condtions with your next 3 strikes. Number of conditions transfer 1. Cooldown 40 seconds.

:)

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

Thing is the current form of dagger training isn’t reliable with its current duration and restrictions and the lack of control over this trait imo is a bad thing. Thief is about precision (not the stat), same reason I never liked improvisation pre patch because the idea of an effect being a low % doesn’t fit the quick thinking playstyle I’ve come to love with thief. They could increase the duration a little bit and the proc chance but then it starts to get very strong very quick and as a trait alone, you would probably start to see 5+ stacks easily from it (which is rather high). Remember this is 1 trait and its only method of utilization is cycling the auto attack or death blossom. Other users (such as s/d or p/d) can’t make use of this trait and I’m in the same boat as a lot of other thieves suggesting to remove weapon restricted traits and open them towards all weapon sets.

I think they should go along the lines of something a little simpler but that benefits any sort of dagger usage and the same goes for potent poison to benefit a condition build as a whole. Something like

[Dagger Training] Gain increased damage and condition duration for each dagger equipped. Off hand dagger skills refund 1 initiative if they land (dancing dagger would be limited to 1). Damage increase 5%. Condition duration increase 5%.

[Potent Poison] Increase condition duration by 15%. Poison deals an additional 15% damage.

This way these traits gets a little more versatility for condition or power builds, d/d gets a nice buff and becomes more rewarding for the higher risk all the while p/d gets a little bonus for the bleeding and torment and stealth (d/p gets a little too but not much). Potent poison sees a little bit of nerf to poison duration but with some reworks to the current cooldowns and durations of existing poison applications it would make quick stacking much more potent rather than trying to focus solely on poison which will now be better complimented by its bleed and torment partners. Not to mention DA lost its 30% condition duration which was never re-instated properly and hurt condition builds a lot. Some increases to poison could be:

-Choking Gas: Increase to 3.5 seconds
-Lotus Strike: Increase to 7 seconds
-Spider Venom: Reduce cooldown to 30 seconds.
-Serpents Touch: Increase to 12 seconds.
(make up for potent poison duration nerf, over 50% is a lot).

An ICD on dagger training helps OH dagger but it would still be underwhelming as there would be no way to make it potent and the current version of it depends on constantly cycling the auto attack and death blossom and doesn’t even last long enough to put a dent anywhere. The auto attack already has poison and death blossom has bleeds, there could be much more to benefit here than just 1 condition and 1 playstyle.

Could teef leaders mail me in game, I want to gather some information for an event.

Thief deserves some range increase but I don’t know if pistol is the one that needs it. It’d make sense to give some flavor to a vastly underused set but the only reason I would want longer range is to poke at a group with my sb because going into melee range would get me killed instantly. I think more of the issue is pistol in general, making the range increase baseline would fix next to nothing.

On a semi-related note, the whole argument of “thief is the melee specialist” is kitten, they die in seconds if they don’t take every precaution when in melee range, and there are classes that can out dps thief in melee and range with their respective builds. Why do non-thief players continue to want us pushed into 1 build and 1 playstyle? Raging at the wrong class with no facts or actual experience. Thief is not in a good place, hasn’t been for a long time. Only reason they exist is because many people haven’t given up on it yet.

I know I was given some responsibility to organize events, I’ve just got a lot on my plate and only log on for at most 3 hours a day if at all, and those are at random times.

I’ll try to get more events goin but even so, Teef was about a social guild for thief players especially new ones seeking advice. I wouldn’t consider Teef to be the kind to do a calendar and host weekly events for other guilds to recognize us. I could care less if other guilds recognize us. From what I’ve seen we don’t promote our selves like that so yes, we could do a little more as a guild in game but its not what this guild was built on. Unless something has changed O.o

babazhook.6805:

Sundering strikes.

Again I have tested this a lot using P/P. Initially I thought durations the issue but it is not in reality. Increasing durations will not add any meaningful stacks simply because of INI limitations.

In order for sundering strikes to be add meaningful damage over the other traits one needs an attack that maximizes the number of stacks per INI used. Again while the AA of any weapon set INI free it not practical to use this on most weaponsets as a vulnerability source.

Thus the fastest way to add stacks in the current setup is with an attack like unload on the p/p set. The problem of course is INI is gone before you can get enough stacks to make the damage from said stcks noticeable and once your INI gone it hard to take advantage of all those stacks you managed to put on.

Suggestion.

keep as is. 50 percent chance to add vulnerability with a 5 second (1 second lower) duration BUT make it apply two stacks rather than one on a proc. This will heavily favor a p/p build for those stacks but this a good thing and will help make that set more viable.

Since virtually all other attacks outside the AA chain on all weaponsets are single attacks for the same amount of INI they will get no where near the potential of the p/p set for said stacks yet will get a significant boost over the current trait.

This will act to boost both SB and P/P relative to other weaponsets as Vulnerability stackers making them have much more utility. (the mulitple attacks off the unload skill and the SB aoe attacks are key here)

I think duration should exceed stack application. Reason being thief is not a good frontline type of profession and with the removal of ricochet, you are not going to get a group vulnerability count that noticeable. Additionally sundering strikes has 3 limitations right off the bat as it is now; initiative, critical hits, and quick hits. Without maintaininig those 3 the trait is next to useless. Now if the duration was say 8 seconds (1 stack) you could pop out an unload, or pistol whip, or even death blossom on a hybrid build to get a few stacks up there and then back down a little bit or conserve your initiative spenders for a moment, not to mention condition/vulnerability duration becomes much more relevant since higher base durations take the best advantage of them.

If the trait was higher stacks lower duration all it would promote is the repeated use of skills like unload and pistol whip without any thought to setting up afterwards. Honestly given the stack amount and sources of vulnerability on thief, I think this trait should give 10 seconds of vulnerability on 50% of critical hits. Makes setting up combos much more effective and you would be able to either get a steady flow of 12+ stacks or you could reach 25 if you risk draining your initiative but atleast then your allies can benefit from that.

Mefiq.7039:

NinjaEd.3946:

Mefiq.7039:

D/P is and always will be better that D/D

Think people would like to disagree and make them equal. Everyone knows d/p is better, but it shouldn’t always be better, otherwise what is the point of allowing such a set? Aesthetics? I prefer to think d/d is more skill based and should have a higher reward given the higher risk.

Ask devs why they trying to remove all fun from thief. Day and night buffs on dumb ranger and 0 fixes to thief and again even less viable builds

Because no one at anet is passionate about thief so they have no strong representative for the class and its well being. That’s why we get bull kitten changes like making residual venom baseline across all venoms only to nerf DV (ninja nerf if you ask me) and BV which didn’t need a 2nd charge.

I don’t think anyone at anet has a clue on where they want thief to be or how to make it enjoyable. It’s kind of just that 3rd medium armor profession that you see in character creation.

Depends, are you ok with getting disappointed every patch when your build diversity goes nowhere? If not, pick ranger.

Granted they don’t have the best line up atm, atleast you can make some very viable builds on it that work solo or in a team fight. Thief is very limited on options along with a very very high skill requirement to be seen as “effective” in either of these fields.

Talk all the kitten you want, I still get bored watching pvp in this game. Not to say there aren’t good players out there, but its not entertaining to say the least.

Mefiq.7039:

D/P is and always will be better that D/D

Think people would like to disagree and make them equal. Everyone knows d/p is better, but it shouldn’t always be better, otherwise what is the point of allowing such a set? Aesthetics? I prefer to think d/d is more skill based and should have a higher reward given the higher risk.

Suggested Fixes (Broad Details)

-For 1 shot mechanics, simply pull back raw damage scaling based on things like # of players and fractal levels so a simple auto attack isn’t going to down you. In response, introduce more methods of these bosses reaching you and/or breaking through your defenses all the while having exposed weaknesses themselves. By this I mean, say the boss has “unblockable leap” as one of its noted effects. Ofcourse, it means their leap attack cannot be blocked however something to counter this could be something like they are susceptible to knockback effects during that leap regardless of how their defiance bar is set. There are many defensive measures, many types of CC, and many types of attacks. They should become a little more in depth other than a chain combo to just keep them from moving or firing and forgetting to dps the boss as quick as possible.

-This kind of ties to the last point with bosses having moments of exposure or being less/more resistant to certain types of attacks and effects so you feel like you can focus on more than his heavy hits and busting out all your skills to kill it quickly.

-Part of the issue with support is, dps support is a very common tool in parties and some support builds really don’t bring a whole lot to the group to keep them going. It’s kind of sick that there are dps builds that can self stack 25 might and perma fury, it makes any aspect of a support build irrelevant when they can do that and maintain their dps role in the group. This is a major issue that pvp faces too and it’d be nice to see some effort made to change this. Perhaps reworking might to be stronger but difficult to apply and in response giving the tools of a potential support build to have a much easier time dishing these things out? This can apply to other boons to as far as being reworked to help pvp and pve see a stronger presence of these boons but not being so easy to acquire. Don’t forget, they are different game modes so adjusting a value really shouldn’t be an issue. If someone honestly wants to try to keep their build the same when going from fighting AI to a player, they need to realize no AI will behave like a player in a MMO. Get used to things changing.

-I’m not sure what to suggest for fixing trash mob gathering aside from giving environmental tools to help. It seems more of an issue that these mobs spawn in such spread out locations and like to bounce around a lot since there is no controllable “agro” in this game. Except for Mesmer and guardian there aren’t a whole lot of AoE pull skills so only thing I can suggest is adjusting trash mobs to not be so ridiculous in dungeons like the spiders in AC that can stack 20+ poison on you and even if you reflect them they hardly are touched by it.

-Lastly, there needs to be more evolving or updated fights so you aren’t always going to walk into the same rotation. For example, the Frozen Maw event has misc chilling twisters, a slow attacking mage who eventually morphs into a hard hitting golem but moves very slowly. There should be a little more thought like having the twisters encase players in ice if they stay in it too long, using a whirl finisher in a twister automatically launches you away, the golem form should use seismic leap towards groups of players that are >600 units away, chilled players deal less damage towards it, etc. Don’t make this paragraph for each boss but even the veterans or champions randomly around the game, they need to be a little more interactive with their surroundings and respectively, get some worthy loot. The collection achievements helped with this a lot but even bounties of crafting components for players seeking them.

tl;dr I really don’t want to see old content become irrelevant. There have been minor details on the new mastery system and it was said in a post from anet that they are aware some world bosses are too easy, but the few attempts to change that have done almost nothing. There are ways to deal with a huge crowd and the smaller scale fights should easily of been balanced by now to be a little more unique.

Since the Living Story started and new mobs were introduced, I’ve seen a few interesting and difficult encounters along the way. At least, until the mechanics of these bosses were studied and gotten to the point where its no different from the old encounters we have. We still have roughly the same list of issues with both open world and dungeon bosses big and small, and I hope there are some sweeping changes done to them even for the lower level zones. Things like:

-1 shot mechanics are all too common, just because evasion and block are in game doesn’t mean there should be so many high scaling effects that flat out cannot be survived by any amount of health or toughness. They are getting better having red outlines of where these skills connect for the larger skills but for some encounters they still have the kind of effects that follow like a trail of dominos with no chance of surviving.

-Defiance is getting reworked but I still feel like cc in general is impossible to regulate in the open world encounters. The change will help dungeons for sure but some of the larger bosses need some counter cc to be introduced or for cc skills to be a little more thoughtful in how they work against certain types of enemies.

-Dps is still the #1 tool against these bosses. A few times blocking/reflecting walls are called for but overall its might stacking, cleaving, and crits. There is little to no opportunities to get away from that.

-Stacking for the sake of mob gathering is still #1. I can understand it being appropriate for the party so they can benefit from their outgoing boons and finishers but for the sake of gathering trash mobs they need to solve this in a reasonable manner so “trash” mobs aren’t incredibly threatening unless using this method.

-little to no enemies really change up their skill bar throughout the fight or between encounters. This is a huge issue with them becoming farm tools rather than a boss because people know exactly what they’re going to do and get away with it before the fight even starts.

Like its been said, there are bonus effects for staying above a threshold and there are also bonus effects for getting your target below a threshold so the constant flow of healing is helpful. I think the issue is more so that some classes fill this role far better than others and in some cases don’t even have to specialize for it and their allies can feel the benefits.

Support in general is wacked up, its mostly just dps your target faster than they do and controlling them.